Character Insight No. 214: Best of T'Pol

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we return to the "Best Of" series, which will now cover the main characters of the most recent Star Trek show, Enterprise. [FAITH OF THE HEART] We begin this week with Commander T'Pol.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp214

T'Pol develops feelings for Trip and eventually mates with him in the show, but it takes a long time for this romance to actually fire successfully. In one of T'Pol's best vulnerable moments in the Season 3 episode Similitude, she confesses her feelings to Sim, a mimetic symbiote which is about to die following a short two week life.

T'Pol: I just wanted to say, how much your absence will affect the crew....and how much it will affect me.
Sim: I appreciate that. All in all, I guess I've had a pretty good life.

The bond between Trip and T'Pol begins with much humor, as shown in the Season 1 episode Unexpected and this memorable moment:

Sub-Commander T'Pol: I've run a check through the Starfleet database. You might be pleased to know that this is the first recorded incident of a Human male becoming pregnant.
Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Just how I always wanted to get into the history books.

Another great episode is the Season 2 Carbon Creek, where T'Pol recounts a story to Archer and Trip of her Vulcan grandmother, also played by Jolene Blalock, is stranded in 1950s America. It builds needed warmth between these top characters while also allowing T'Pol to show off her wit and dry sense of humor.

Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: [after the story] Do you realize you've just rewritten our history books?
Sub-Commander T'Pol: A footnote at best.
Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Footnote? This is like finding out Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to walk on the moon!
Sub-Commander T'Pol: Perhaps he wasn't.

That same sense of humor comes out when Archer and Trip insist on having T'Pol join the crew for movie night and a scary movie marathon (in the episode Horizon). It gives us a chance as viewers to see how silly some of our thrills can be, when taken from an outsider's perspective, which is what T'Pol adds to the show.

Sub-Commander T'Pol: I don't understand why Humans would feel compelled to frighten themselves.
Captain Jonathan Archer: Gets the heart pumping.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: Cardiovascular activity would be more efficient.

Finally, the episode Stigma is another where the character of T'Pol is used in a brilliant way to explore in allegory form the issues facing Earth today. In this case, it is the unwarranted oppression and prosecution of a minority, in this case based on a disease, and T'Pol refuses to escape when she wants to make a point about how this is wrong.

Sub-Commander T'Pol: I have Pa'nar Syndrome. It doesn't make a difference how I contracted it.
Captain Jonathan Archer: It makes a lot of difference. You're not a member of this minority. He forced himself on you, you said it yourself.
Dr. Phlox: He's right, T'Pol, you should tell them.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: He is not right. If I used that as a defense as a way to keep from being taken off Enterprise, I'd be condoning their prejudice, and in the process indicting every member of the minority. I won't do that.

Much like the character of Spock, T'Pol is a crucial piece of character added to investigate outsider takes on human society as well as be a conduit for her own allegories. Jolene Blalock should definitely be commended as a bright spot in this Trek iteration. She can most recently be seen acting in the movies Killing Frisco and Sex Tape from 2014.

Character Insight No. 213: Lieutenant Kelowitz

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Lieutenant Kelowitz, a tactical aide serving aboard Kirk's Enterprise in TOS.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp213

Kelowitz serves in the sciences division, which entitles him to a blue shirt and the right to survive away missions. Most of his appearances are on these away missions, and he survives some really notable trips off Enterprise.

When the shuttlecraft Galileo goes missing in the episode The Galileo Seven, Kelowitz leads one of the landing parties who is searching the Taurus II planet for the shuttle. His party is ambushed by the planet's inhabitants, leading to a death and some injuries. Kelowitz survives though, as the party leader and someone now wearing the dreaded red of security.

The tactical aide is next seen in the episode Arena, where he accompanies Kirk to investigate the destruction of an observation outpost on Cestus III. Kelowitz helps Kirk force the Gorn back to their ship by executing a flanking maneuver, which leads to the eventual chase and showdown between the Gorn captain and Kirk caused by the Metrons.

QUOTE (from Arena)

Kirk: Kelowitz, head over there.

Later on, in the episode This Side of Paradise, Kelowitz is again accompanying a landing party to investigate a mystery about a colony there. He is taken over by alien spores, but is saved when the spores are destroyed by a subsonic transmitter. Despite being put in a lot of dangerous situations, Kelowitz survives and keeps on serving during the 5-year mission. 

Interestingly, these latter two roles for Kelowitz were originally written for other characters, a new one named Molton and for Crewman Dimont. However, by re-using Kelowitz and making him a recurring character, it brings more continuity to the show, making you cheer for his survival and success much more than an unknown face in the crowd. His blue uniform while serving in a tactical role is fairly unusual, but it has been explained in novels and other works to be a sign of him working as a generalist officer in many departments, with the viewer only seeing him in the tactical role of away missions.

Kelowitz was played by Grant Woods, who was an actor and stuntman after retiring from the Navy around 1960. Woods died at age 36 in a motorcycle accident, just one year after filming these appearances on Star Trek. His final work was as a regular on the Custer TV series and associated movie.

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